Fifty years ago, 20 million children under-five died of preventable diseases. Today the death toll is below 9 million for the first time. Changing the world is possible. We've done it. To keep making progress we must invest more in these simple and effective discoveries like vaccines that do so much to save children's lives.

Now is the moment to invest in global childhood immunization efforts and rid the universe of deadly diseases once and for all. Here's why:

• We have two new vaccines to take aim at the main killers of kids around the world-pneumonia and diarrhea. If we invest in delivering the vaccines that prevent the leading causes of these diseases, then we can save the lives of 1.3 million children under-five each year and protect many more from becoming sick and/or disabled.
  
  
• Our efforts to immunize children are working. Ten years ago, measles killed 750,000 people globally. Today, there are fewer than 200,000 deaths from measles each year thanks to vaccines. Measles has already been wiped out in the Americas and now it is every bit as possible to wipe it out worldwide. Because we have models of successful immunization networks for diseases like measles and polio, we can duplicate them to deliver new and underused vaccines to children who need them.
  
  
• More than 4-in-5 children born last year received all the routine immunizations scheduled for their first year of life. That's a new world record and we're closer than ever before to reaching the global goal of protecting 90 percent of children in every country with vaccines.
  
  
• We have discovered more lifesaving vaccines than ever before-120 at last count and 80 more are on the horizon for as early as 2012. This year, these vaccines we can hold in our hands will prevent about 2.5 million child deaths. That's almost five kids a minute who will now have the chance to grow up healthy, go to school and contribute to our world. But we can do better. If 90 percent of children under-five are immunized against 14 major diseases that we already have vaccines to fight (like polio, tuberculosis and measles), then 2 million more children under-five will live every year.
  
  
• The price of the basic five-in-one vaccine has decreased by 19 percent from $3.65 in 2009 to $2.94 today. When you multiply that by the 130 million children born worldwide each year, that's a lot of savings-in dollars and in lives. So now we can vaccinate more children at a lower cost than ever before.
  
  
• As we near the deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, organizations and governments around the world are coming together to make childhood immunization a top priority in this new decade. Governments from the United States to Rwanda; leading partners like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the GAVI Alliance, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and children's advocacy groups like Global Action for Children and the U.S. Coalition for Child Survival have all united to mobilize support and resources to seize our momentous opportunity and invest in children through vaccines.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that right now, the stars are aligned for vaccines.

Now see what you can do to spread the word and make sure every child gets the vaccines he and she needs to grow up safe, healthy and ready to thrive.